Fathers and Family
by bingblot
Summary: A post-ep to 6x12 "Deep Cover." "I keep making the mistake of thinking he's family. But he's not. You are." The conversation Castle and Beckett should have had about Castle's father. One-shot.


Disclaimer: I own nothing related to "Castle." I only wish I did…

Author's Note: Because I really felt like more needed to be said about Castle and his father after "Deep Cover" and I've wanted to see more serious conversations between Castle and Beckett.

**Fathers and Family**

Kate stirred and sleepily reached out a hand for Castle, finding nothing but the sheets. She blinked her eyes open, still a little groggy, to see that his side of the bed was empty and he was nowhere in sight.

She pushed herself up, yawning a little, as she slid out of bed. It wasn't exactly unheard of for Castle to wake up in the middle of the night and leave the bed, usually as a result of having had an inspiration overnight that he wanted to write out before the moment left him. But after those moments, he also sometimes ended up dozing off over his laptop to wake up in the morning with a crick in his neck and a stiff back.

Moving quietly, she peeked around the door—if Castle was writing, she wouldn't disturb him. She knew that often he did his best writing in the middle of the night when everyone else was asleep and the distractions were limited.

He wasn't writing. He was seated on the floor, leaning against one of the bookshelves, a small book in his hands. But oddly, he wasn't reading the book. The book was closed and he was staring absently at the cover.

She frowned a little, the look on his face telling her what had awoken him, why he was sitting down here alone. She supposed she shouldn't be surprised. After the day he had had, seeing his long-lost father again, learning that his father had manipulated him… She had been going to ask him about it earlier when she'd gotten home but he had been cheerful and upbeat and she hadn't been able to bring herself to dampen his mood. He'd pulled up the calendar for September with all his scheduled book tours marked off and they'd started to narrow down possible dates. She had called her dad to find out if there were any days in September he would be unavailable on and Castle had called Paula to give her advance warning that he'd need to cancel or reschedule some of his tours in September. So there'd been wedding talk and Martha had been there and the evening had slipped away without the subject of Anderson Cross or whatever his name was coming up.

She pushed the door open a little wider, walking over to him and slipping down to sit beside him, as he put his arm around her shoulders.

She didn't say anything for a moment, only looked at him and then at the book in his hands, noting that it was a copy of the James Bond novel, "_Casino Royale_." Fitting, she supposed, for Castle to be looking at a novel about the most famous secret agent ever, after a day of having to come to terms with just what it meant that his own father was a secret agent himself.

"Couldn't sleep?" she finally asked quietly, not quite an outright invitation but not quite not. She wasn't sure if he would talk about it. He had a way of seeming so open about most things and yet about the things and emotions that went the deepest, he could be as walled up as she was—as she used to be, before he'd somehow dug his way past her walls. It was something that still surprised her sometimes. It was easy, a lot of days, to believe his usual insouciance. But then she'd realized years ago that his outward lightheartedness was as much a shield for his real self as her own reticence was, a more charming shield admittedly, but a shield nonetheless. She had once caught herself thinking that his (often inappropriate) humor, the charm he often used defensively, were the walls of the (figurative) castle behind which he hid his real self—and then had to laugh at herself. She must have been spending too much time with Castle to start thinking in such terms.

He sighed, lifting the book slightly. "He sent this to me." There was no need to ask who "he" was.

She looked at the book again, more closely. "This… is the book you got in that package right after you and Alexis got back from Paris."

"Yeah. It was his way of letting me know that he'd survived that night in Paris."

She hesitated and then asked, carefully, "Survived what?" Castle had never told her exactly what happened in Paris. He'd told her the official story about the Paris police and Interpol for her to pass on to Ryan and Esposito. Beyond that, he'd told her something about using an old friend of his to track down a mysterious someone known for his abilities to find things or people—find or hunt was the implication. He had certainly not mentioned that he'd somehow met his father. She'd known he was holding back on the real story—and so was Alexis, for that matter—but after the ordeal they had been through and her soul-deep relief at having them both back safe and sound, she hadn't needed to ask, had hardly cared in truth. Now, though, she wondered and she waited with just a thread of apprehension.

Would he talk to her about this? She knew he loved her and he trusted her—and yet she couldn't help but wonder if there were corners of himself that he still held back, not deliberately, but out of habit and instinct.

There was a pause and then finally, speaking quietly, Castle told her about Paris, summarizing his interactions with his father, Jackson Hunt a.k.a. Anderson Cross.

It was a fascinating, thrilling story, but Kate spared a moment to shudder inwardly at his cursory summary of what had happened in the forest and how his father had first appeared; he only sketched out the bare outlines but years of being a cop had taught her enough to guess at the rest and to realize just how much danger Castle had been in. And she hadn't been there, had been an ocean away, and if anything had happened to him there… She shoved the thought away. It was over and he was back now. She shifted just the tiniest bit closer to the solid, reassuring warmth of him to nestle her head against his shoulder and he rested his cheek against her hair.

He fell silent, the story told.

She wasn't quite sure what to say but felt as if she needed to react somehow so she settled for a quiet, "Wow."

He let out a huff of breath that was almost a snort. "I know. It was like living through one of my books."

She allowed herself a small smile, knowing from this that he had been somewhat restored to his usual self. "So how did '_Casino Royale_' come in?"

"He told me that we'd met before. It was when I was around 10. Mother took me to the Public Library. We went often when I was little," he added in an aside. "It was a good place for Mother to be able to learn her lines for her latest role without worrying about me and I could amuse myself by reading."

Kate had a sudden mental picture of Castle as a very young boy poring over a book and couldn't help but smile to herself. He must have been adorable, all big eyes and curiosity and imagination.

"Anyway, that day I was browsing the stacks looking for a new book to read and a man in a baseball cap came up beside me and started looking at the books too and after a minute he turned to smile down at me and asked me what kind of book I liked to read. Adventure stories was what I told him and he smiled and handed me a copy of '_Casino Royale_' from the shelves. He told me it was one of the most exciting adventures ever and then winked at me before he left."

"That's a cute story."

"Oh, that's not really all. I read '_Casino Royale_' because of him that day and, well, I loved it. I thought that James Bond was the coolest man on the planet."

She smiled. "James Bond is pretty cool. So did you decide you wanted to be a spy when you grew up?"

"No, actually. Maybe it was something about growing up surrounded by actors but I figured out early on that I didn't particularly want to live through a lot of the stories that were told, didn't want to be the person the exciting stories were necessarily told about, because as far as I could see from most of the stories, the people the dramatic, thrilling, and tragic stories were about were usually miserable or ended up dead and I didn't want that. No, I wanted to be a story-teller, to entertain people and fire up their imaginations the way the Bond stories had for me, because above all, the Bond stories were _fun_. The weapons, the fast cars, the gadgets, the intrigue, and everything."

"And the hot women in the Bond stories," she added dryly. "Don't tell me you didn't enjoy that part."

He let out a brief laugh. "Well, I didn't enjoy it when I was 10. When I got older, let's just say I appreciated that aspect more."

"Oh, I'm sure."

He sobered and finished, "Anyway, there you have it. I found out that the father I'd never known ended up having a huge influence on me, that one little thing he did basically determining what I would end up doing for the rest of my life."

"And he got you access to the CIA which led to Derrick Storm," she said more quietly.

"He said he read my books."

"Of course he did, Castle. He is your father," she said quietly. Because he was. He was Castle's _father_. The impact of the words suddenly hit her all over again, momentarily stopping her breath as it had earlier that day when Castle had made that announcement. _Future father-in-law._ It had actually taken her a second to process that, what that meant, in her shock at seeing their murder suspect in the loft.

Castle let out an unamused little bark of a laugh. "How much is that worth, since it doesn't seem to mean that much?" _Doesn't seem to mean that much to him._ The last words went unsaid but Kate could hear in Castle's voice it was what he meant.

She winced inwardly, hearing in Castle's voice the depth of his disappointment and his disillusionment, all the emotion he hadn't quite shown earlier even as he'd told her that his father wasn't family, she was.

"He's still your father, Rick," she repeated, using his first name to underscore her seriousness. "And I'm sure he cares about you, about Martha, about Alexis."

Castle sighed. "Oh, in his way, he cares. He just cares about his job, his mission, more. I just... I wanted to trust him, wanted him to be family. After the way he showed up in Paris, at the worst time in my life, and saved me and Alexis, I guess I built him up in my head to be this perfect super-spy. And he said he'd been watching out for us from a distance so I just… I assumed he wanted to be family. I wasn't sure I'd ever see him again after Paris but then I did and I thought… well, I thought it was a sign he wanted to know me, wanted to be family. But it wasn't like that. When it came down to his mission and us, he put his mission first."

In spite of the real hurt in Castle's voice, Kate couldn't help but feel her heart melt a little inside her at his words. It was so like him and it got to the core of what she loved about him—as aggravating as he could be sometimes, he _cared_ so much, loved so deeply. Family was everything to him and she of all people knew that he would do anything for those he loved. And so what Anderson Cross—whatever his name was—had done had struck at the heart of what Castle believed in about putting family first.

"Don't think about it like that. When you think about it, in the end, he had our back. He had _your_ back. He escaped the loft and came to the library to have your back, even while recovering from a gunshot wound."

She wasn't quite sure where this defense of Anderson-Cross-whatever-his-name-was had come from but she knew that it was what Castle needed. He needed to feel better about his father. And somehow Kate couldn't bear the idea of Castle feeling so betrayed. So if glossing over what Anderson Cross had done was what it took, well, that was what she would do.

And now, after the case was over, she could think a little more clearly and reflect on how lonely it must be not to be able to have any family or any real friends. It was the life he had chosen but it must still be lonely. And while she couldn't quite condone the choices he'd made—sending Castle to walk unwittingly into a trap—she could at least understand the idea of having a duty to a cause that was larger than oneself, more important than one person. It wasn't something Kate could really feel herself, not after what had happened to her mother. She could not weigh the life of one person against any vague idea or concept and decide that the "greater good" of that cause outweighed the one life. It was why she'd had to leak the news about Svetlana and gotten fired in the process and even if she'd known beforehand that doing so would have cost her her job, she knew she would still have done the same thing. Every life mattered. Full stop. But she knew that not everyone saw it like that. She could even accept that it might be a good thing, that there might be something admirable in the sort of commitment to a cause so deep and so strong it outweighed every other consideration.

So she could feel a certain amount of sympathy for Anderson Cross-whatever-his-name-was.

"Maybe he did but it doesn't mean I can trust him."

"Trust takes time, Castle. You don't really know your father. How can you when you've only met him a couple times? If you had more time, if you got to know him better, then you'll really know if you can trust him or not. And if it turns out that you can't trust him, remember that the best families are the ones we make for ourselves, not necessarily the ones we're born into, and you _have_ family, people you can trust. You have Martha and Alexis and Esposito and Ryan and Lanie…"

"And you," he interrupted. "Don't forget about yourself."

She lifted her head from his shoulder to give him a small smile. "I thought it went without saying that you had me. We're partners."

His expression softened, his eyes crinkling, his lips curving in what was almost a smile but wasn't quite. "You're always worth mentioning."

She rested her head against his shoulder again as he tightened his arm around her. "I'm sorry about all this with your father."

She felt him shake his head, his cheek rubbing against her hair. "You have nothing to be sorry for. And… I'm okay, I think. I'll be okay. It's not… bad…"

He trailed off and she waited for a moment before he went on, a little haltingly, "It never bothered me that much not knowing my dad. Maybe a little at times when I was growing up but for the most part, it really didn't bother me much. I wondered, of course, but you can't miss what you never knew and, well, when I thought about it, I usually just made up stories about him to fill in the gap. And then after a while, I realized that maybe it was better not knowing, to have the freedom to make up those stories about my dad."

"Better, because if you didn't know him, you could also never be disappointed by him," she quietly said, understanding now. She remembered how much it had hurt after her mother had died to see her dad—the dad she had grown up idolizing—descend into alcoholism, remembered the searing disappointment she had felt all the times she had found her dad drunk. At least—and she was thankful for it every day of her life—she had gotten her dad back. But yes, she understood how it could be better not to know than to know, only to be disappointed.

"Right, exactly." He kissed her hair. "Now…" He sighed a little. "It's… nice to have some answers, nice to be able to put a face to the person, but it's also…"

"I know, Castle. It hurts to be disappointed by a parent."

He sucked in his breath, stiffening a little. "Kate, I didn't mean… your dad…"

"It's okay, Castle," she interrupted and felt him relax. She knew he hadn't meant to remind her of her dad's past struggles; he knew it was a sensitive subject for her and he was generally careful to avoid bringing it up. "I _was_ disappointed but I'm not anymore, you know. I'm _proud_ of my dad."

"You should be proud of him," he agreed. "Your dad's strong to go through what he did and overcome his demons the way he did. He's almost as strong as his daughter."

She couldn't help but smile at this. "Flattery, Castle?"

"It's not flattery if it's the truth," he told her quietly and entirely seriously.

Just for that—and just because she could—she lifted her head to kiss his chin before settling back against him.

He lifted the shoulder she wasn't leaning against in a little shrug. "I suppose I'll just have to come to terms with my dad as a real person, with flaws and everything. Put like that, I guess it means I have to grow up."

"Grow up, you? Never," she teased him gently.

He laughed and nudged her. "Hey, shouldn't you be nicer to the love of your life?"

"Oh, is that what you are? You sure about that?" she quipped, even as she felt happiness bloom inside her. Oh, she loved this so much, the way they were both so settled, so confident, in their relationship now. She'd had no idea how much joy there was in a _sure_ love.

"Haha, very funny," he pretended to grouse.

She only smiled. "And at least now you know where you got your ruggedly handsome looks from."

He smirked. "I'll have you know, Detective, that my ruggedly handsome looks are unique."

Maybe it was a result of seeing his familiar smirk or maybe it was just that they'd been talking about his father but whatever it was, she was suddenly reminded of what Meredith had said when she'd visited the year before, Meredith's explanation for why she and Castle hadn't worked out. _We're not like a soufflé. _

She laughed aloud at the thought, the ridiculous phrasing but also laughed from sheer giddiness at her own newfound confidence in this, in _them_, laughed for long enough that Castle frowned a little.

"Beckett, it wasn't that funny."

She shook her head and after a few minutes, managed to get a hold of herself. "I wasn't laughing at what you said; I was laughing at something I thought of."

"What were you thinking of that was so funny?"

She grinned at him, still so entirely happy in this certainty in their relationship that went so much beyond the simple fact of the ring on her finger, and she suddenly needed to make sure he knew. "We're not like a soufflé."

"What?" He gave her a look that suggested he thought she'd lost her mind.

She had to laugh at the look on his face. "I'm not crazy, Castle. It was something Meredith said last year."

His face went from confused to wary in the blink of an eye. "What did Meredith say?"

She sobered, hesitated, but then answered, "She compared being married to you to a soufflé, just as light and airy and fluffy, but that soufflés always collapse in the end."

He grimaced. "Did she happen to mention that that particular soufflé collapsed when I walked in on her cheating on me?"

Kate winced a little. No, she hadn't known that part. "She said that your marriage didn't work out because she didn't know enough about you, that you wouldn't talk about yourself with her."

Castle sighed and shut his eyes for a moment before he met her eyes. "Kate… Meredith was—well, she wasn't really someone to confide in." He made a wry face. "She was never interested in anything that wasn't about her for very long."

"It's okay, Castle, you don't have to explain," Kate hurriedly assured him. She gave him a soft smile, lifting a hand to touch his cheek. "What I meant, my real point when I brought this up was that I'm not worried about any of this, about _us_."

He brought her hand to his lips to kiss her palm. "You're not worried because we're not like a soufflé?" he repeated slowly.

She smiled. "Exactly. We're not like that; we're more like… a rock."

He laughed, raising his eyebrows. "A rock? Beckett, really?"

She narrowed her eyes at him. "Shut up, Castle. You're the writer, not me. I'm _trying_ to tell you something about our relationship."

He promptly rearranged his features into almost preternatural solemnity. "Sorry, sorry. What did you want to say?"

She wanted to roll her eyes but his mockery wasn't important. "You remember how I told you once I was a one-and-done kind of girl?"

He nodded, all traces of humor gone now.

"I think that you are my one-and-done."

"See? I told you I'm the love of your life." His voice was teasing but his eyes were not.

Looking at him, she suddenly felt a flutter of fear break through her giddy certainty—the familiar impulse to retreat, to hold back from committing too much of herself. It was all too much, too overwhelming. She felt again some of the old, old, familiar fear of loss, the fear of hurt, the fear of betrayal. Those constant companions of hers since that long-ago night when she and her dad had arrived home to find Detective Raglan waiting for them and her world had been brutally ripped apart. The fear that had led her to build protective walls around herself, the fear that had held her back from ever truly giving herself or deeply loving anyone again. Until now. Until him.

But she saw the depths of the love in his eyes and she felt her heart swell with all the love she felt for him and she realized, again, that it was too late for her to try to hold back from all she felt for him. It was too late for her to even pretend that she wasn't committed to him, to their relationship, with all the depth and strength of her soul.

She was his, entirely and completely, and he needed to know that, deserved to know that. She already knew that he was hers.

_I'm the love of your life. _

"Yes, you are."

_~The End~_

_Author's Note 2: I wasn't planning on including the reference to "Significant Others" but that part rather wrote itself. Thank you for reading and for reviewing! Now to go back to obsessing over Season 7 and counting down the days until Monday… _


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